A police complaint has been filed against actress Swara Bhaskar, Asif Khan of Twitter India, Arfa Khanum Sherwani and Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari, over the Ghaziabad assault video, reports India Today.
Advocate Amit Acharya lodged the complaint at Delhi’s Tilak Marg police station. An FIR is yet to be filed over the new complaint. Meanwhile Delhi Police has launched an inquiry into the matter.
Earlier, an FIR was lodged against Twitter Inc, Twitter Communications India and journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, news website The Wire, writer Saba Naqvi and Congress leaders Shama Mohamed, Salman Nizami, Maskoor Usmani in the same case.
Twitter and these prominent users are booked for posting a viral video in which an elderly Muslim man says he was assaulted and was asked to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
The FIR says “these people did not verify the truth of the matter and shared it online with a communal angle with an intention to disrupt public peace and create a divide between religious groups.”
The FIR was registered at the Ghaziabad’s Loni Border police station around 11.30 pm on Tuesday, based on a complaint filed by a local policeman.
The Press Club of India (PCI) has demanded the FIR naming the journalists should be quashed because it shows “vendetta” by the Ghaziabad police to create a “sense of terror” in the media and society at large.
In an official statement it said, “the PCI appeals to the government of UP to intervene in the matter at the earliest to ensure that journalists are not made easy targets of police high handedness by filing FIR against them.”
In the viral video clip, which appeared on social media on June 14, Abdul Shamad Saifi, the elderly Muslim man, is heard saying he was thrashed by some young men and was asked to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
The Ghaziabad police, however, denied the communal angle and said that the accused were unhappy about a “tabeez” (amulet) he had sold to them. Ghaziabad (Rural) Superintendent of Police Iras Raja on Wednesday said that three people, Kalloo Gurjar, Parvesh Gurjar and Adil have been arrested for thrashing Saifi.
